[Mailman-Developers] Mailman roadmap

[Ian Eiloart]

--On 7 July 2007 12:35:30 -0400 Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Now that we've successfully navigated the switch to Bazaar, it's time
> to lay out plans for future Mailman releases. ....

> I plan on updating the wiki pages to reflect this thinking, but I
> would like to get feedback from y'all about the plan.  It would be
> awesome if we could see a release of Mailman 2.2 some time in late
> 2007 or early 2008.
>
> Comments, question?

All sounds very good. My two main problems with driving Mailman uptake here 
on campus are both to do with usability. The first is the current web 
interface, which was great when it was developed, but expectations have 
moved on. The second is the lack of a unified user database. So, it's great 
to see these items listed as the mail focus for 2.2 and 3.0 respectively.

WRT 2.2, I'd like to be able to offer something as simple to use as the 
list management features of Google Groups (which I use for some voluntary 
groups that I work with), but with the ability to expose additional 
functionality on request.

WRT 3.0, for enterprise and education purposes, it's important to be able 
to hook into existing authentication and authorisation mechanisms. For us, 
that means LDAP - at least for authentication. On the other hand, we also 
have external people using our lists, so we need to be able to either put 
them into an SQL database which will work in conjunction with LDAP, or to 
add a separate LDAP tree for them, or something similar.

Something that I've mentioned before, is the importance of preventing 
collateral spam. So, I'd like to be able to have my MTA ask Mailman whether 
a particular email address is permitted to post to a particular list, at 
SMTP time. I'm using Exim, which could call an external python script, but 
I'd rather be able to issue an SMTP callout to a running daemon, for 
efficiency. The callout would be executed after each "RCPT TO".





-- 
Ian Eiloart
IT Services, University of Sussex
x3148